Q: My dad has been a Broncos fan for more than 30 years. After the hiring of coach Josh McDaniels, he divorced the team because the new face of the organization (McDaniels) was a cheater. Can you provide some insight as to McDaniels’ involvement with Spygate?

A: Samuel, I’m not sure I can provide more insight beyond what is known by people I have dealt with in the NFL for a long time.

First, a quick review for those who may not remember. The Patriots — when McDaniels was on their coaching staff and current Broncos video director Steve Scarnecchia was with New England’s video department — were penalized because the NFL said the team was caught videotaping the Jets’ defensive signals with a sideline camera during a game, which is against league rules.

Later there was some discussion that the practice may have gone on for several seasons in more games, but after an investigation the league punished the Patriots only for the incident against the Jets.

The Patriots were ordered to destroy some video. Also, the league fined head coach Bill Belichick $500,000 and fined the team $250,000. A first-round draft pick was taken away as well.

Browns coach Eric Mangini, considered to be the ex-Patriots assistant coach to have turned in New England for Spygate, when he was coaching the Jets, was fined by the league this year for his part in not listing former Jets quarterback Brett Favre on the team’s injury report in 2008 after Favre admitted he had played with an injury for much of the season. So you have some additional tap dancing with the rules by folks who are, or were, associated with the Patriots.

Belichick is criticized privately by his peers for his handling of the team’s injury report almost weekly, so there is that as well.

No matter how much anybody was directly or indirectly involved, or not involved at all, the folks who work for Belichick, or did during the period when the NFL said the Spygate violation occurred, will have to deal with it at some point.

When they interview for jobs with teams, they will be asked by their prospective employers for the truth about what happened. Any team owner or team president is going to want to know what happened, or should want to know.

When he was hired by the Broncos, McDaniels publicly answered questions about Spygate with the response that the Broncos would always follow the rules on his watch. He’s also told others he never used the videotape.

Scarnecchia has not spoken publicly since he was hired by the Broncos before the season. But as a member of the Patriots’ video department, who also worked for Mangini in New York, logic would say it would be difficult for him not to know what was going on in New England.

When Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., was pushing the NFL for more transparency on the whole affair, he publicly said a former Patriots employee — Matt Walsh — told him Scarnecchia did some of the illicit videotaping before Scarnecchia moved on to work for Mangini in New York.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell eventually met with Walsh and Specter on the issue but handed down no further punishments.

Most guys on any video staff in the league are going to videotape what they are told to videotape and not direct a team’s head coach or general manager or anyone else in a position of power to check the rules book. In a perfect world they would, but the unemployment line is the unemployment line.

So it would almost certainly be wrong to say McDaniels had any decision-making power in anything that went on in New England that resulted in Spygate. Now people will simply have to judge him on how he conducts himself as a head coach when he has the decision-making authority that he will be held accountable for.